Birds on the Bay Bridge

Of all the birds that nest on or around the Bay Bridge—gulls, terns, pelicans, pigeons, falcons, hummingbirds—Lauren Bingham is most concerned with the cormorants. It’s not that they’re worse, bird by bird, more onerous or unruly than the other birds; it’s just that there’s so many of them.

Standing on the unopened new span of the Bay Bridge, halfway to Yerba Buena Island, she points at the steel latticework right below the road deck on the old bridge, then gestures back toward Oakland. Cormorants the whole way, she says. “They love it,” she says. “I think the visibility is good.” A black, bowling-pin-shaped bird swoops down towards the water. Traffic is a steady roar. “They don’t seem to mind the noise,” she says.